The European Commission will earmark an additional €1 billion for the 2017-20 period to tackle youth unemployment. This amount, which is expected to be matched by the member states, thus brings the total for the Youth Guarantee for the 2014-2020 period to €14 billion, according to a decision made by the Commission on 13 September.
The Youth Guarantee was set up in 2014 to facilitate the inclusion of young people on the labour market. It tasks the member states with providing young people aged under 25 with a job, work experience or permanent training over the four months after they have left school or lost their job. During his state of the Union speech on 14 September, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said that "more than 9 million young people have already benefited from this programme (…) We will continue to operate the Youth Guarantee throughout Europe; we will thus improve the skill sets of Europeans and we will reach out to the regions and young people who most need it". He did not, however, touch on the crucial question of financing the Guarantee, given that all the resources have until now focused on the 2014-15 period in an effort to speed up the results.
According to information EUROPE has received, this question was supposed to have been tackled the previous day during the commissioners' meeting: on 13 September, the college of commissioners agreed on a proposal for a mid-term review of the Multiannual Financial Framework. This proposal seeks to raise €1 billion from the margins not allocated to agriculture and to the administrative spending for the Youth Guarantee, and tasks the member states with matching this amount on the basis of their European Social Fund contributions.
A source close to the dossier told EUROPE that "this therefore brings the budget available for the Guarantee up to €14 billion for the 2014-20 period". This involves €6.4 billion (€3.2 billion in fresh money focusing on the 2014-15 period and €3.2 billion from the European Social Fund subject to a requirement for national co-financing) under the youth employment initiative, €6 billion which could be raised from the European Social Fund and €2 billion decided on 13 September.
The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) is not, however, satisfied. ETUC Confederal Secretary Thiébaut Weber stated: "We are glad that the Commission has recognised that the Guarantee should be pursued in the future. Nonetheless, its proposal is clearly insufficient". He was quick to describe it as "cosmetic" and "in total contradiction with the stated desire of Mr Junker and the Council to pull out all the stops for young people". He pointed out that ETUC supports the International Labor Organization (ILO) proposal calling for an annual 21 billion envelope for eurozone countries (Ed: the European Parliament supports funding of 4 billion). Weber is also concerned that this additional 1 billion will not be on top of the funding already available. "We know that the 2014-15 envelope for the guarantee has not been spent entirely. This means that the funds will be reprogrammed and therefore disappear from the envelope", he said.
The Commission is expected to present a balance sheet for the Youth Guarantee in the middle of September, which will include an evaluation of the money actually spent up until now. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)